GSS Welcomes Two New Postdoctoral Research Associates

We are excited to announce that Catherine Clune-Taylor and Tala Khanmalek will be joining Princeton's Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies as Postdoctoral Research Associates. I hope you will join me in welcoming Professors Clune-Taylor and Khanmalek to Princeton in Fall 2016!

Catherine Clune-Taylor

Catherine Clune-Taylor, Ph.D, recently defended her dissertation, From Intersex to DSD: A Foucauldian Analysis of the Science, Ethics and Politics of the Medical Production of Cisgendered Lives in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alberta. Her doctoral project begins by taking up the revised treatment model for intersex conditions introduced in 2006 – which controversially reclassified them as Disorders of Sex Development (DSDs) – and goes on to provide a critical Foucauldian analysis of the science, ethics, and (bio)politics underwriting medical efforts that aim at securing cisgendered futures specifically for children unable to provide informed consent. These include not only pediatric management strategies for intersexed children, but also certain efforts used to treat children diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria (GD) – specifically, so-called “conversion therapies”.

Clune-Taylor’s research interests lie in the fields of Philosophy of Sex, Gender and Sexuality, Feminist Theory, Bioethics, Philosophy of Science (with particular emphasis on Philosophy of Biology and of Medicine) and the work of Michel Foucault. She also has additional competencies/interests in Social and Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Race. In addition to a doctorate in philosophy, Clune-Taylor also holds a honors bachelor of medical science in immunology and microbiology, an honors bachelor of arts in philosophy and a master of arts in philosophy, all from the University of Western Ontario. She has been a member of the Canadian Philosophical Association’s Equity Committee since 2013, and served as a Graduate Assistant at the Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) at the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State in 2011.

Tala Khanmalek

Tala Khanmalek completed her PhD in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her dissertation, Living Laboratories: Remapping the Legacy of Experiments in American Empire, traces the gendered racialization of U.S. empire’s colonial expansion from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, as well as women of color feminist texts of the late-twentieth century that reframe these legacies for our present. In 2013, she founded the Politics of Biology and Race in the 21st Century Working Group, a first-time collaboration between scholars in UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Department and School of Public Health. Additionally, Khanmalek has founded, directed, and participated in a wide range of community-based projects in the Bay Area including but not limited to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Body Politic Think Tank, the Niroga Institute's Integral Health Fellowship Program, and Womyn’s Circle. As the Executive Editor of nineteen sixty nine: an ethnic studies journal , Khanmalek published the Special Issue on "Healing Justice." She was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz's Science and Justice Research Center for the 2014-2015 academic year.